Edited by
Dipankar Gupta
CONTRIBUTIONS TO INDIAN SOCIOLOGY
OCCASIONAL STUDIES 12
SAGE Publications
New Delhi

Any student of Indian sociology would be interested to know how caste
is faring in contemporary India. The fact that India is undergoing rapid
changes, both economically and politically, contributes to the urgency
with which an update on caste becomes necessary. Though there have
been several works that have discussed the impact of caste on democratic
politics and how different castes have reacted to growing urbanisation
and the Green Revolution, there was still a gap that had to be filled. What
needed to be done was to analyse these changes within a conceptual framework
that would allow for an alternative perspective on the caste order.
It is often said that caste is changing, but what is not clear is whether
this entails the need for a new term altogether, or whether this form of
social stratification can now be merged with another rubric, such as class,
that is tried, tested and much universalised. Steering clear of these temptations,
the articles in this volume provide us with an alternative perspective
on caste as a whole, using contemporary experiences to reflect upon the
received theories of caste. For any such undertaking it is impossible to
ignore Louis Dumont’s Homo Hierarchicus, even if one has serious disagreements
with it.
Through a number of field-based studies the articles in this volume
argue for a different conceptualisation of caste—one that would take into
account the need for caste assertion and dignity as well as notions of
hierarchy. Taken together, these contributions contend that pride in one’s
caste identity is a very important characteristic of the caste order and that
this is not incompatible with contesting notions of hierarchy. To be able
to carry this point across theoretically it is imperative that we abandon the
view that a single all-encompassing hierarchy is the most enduring diacritic
of caste. Instead we must now ask if caste can be seen first in terms
of discrete identities, and then see its implications in terms of the articulation
of multiple and contesting hierarchies.